Tom Brangwen is descended from a long line of small landowners who owned Marsh Farm in Nottinghamshire for many generations. Tom is a man of the earth and lives alone on his farm with only an elderly woman, as a company and as a housekeeper. Then a Polish widow, Lydia Lensky, becomes the governess of the local church vicar. She brings with her her little daughter, Anna. One evening a few months later, Tom finds the courage to present the widow with a bouquet of daffodils in the vicar's kitchen and ask her to be her wife.
Judged by the standards of the world, their marriage is satisfactory. They have two sons and Tom is kind to his stepdaughter. Getting to know his stepdaughter, however, is easier for him than getting to know Lydia. The fact that they are of different nationalities, cultures and even languages prevents them from becoming intellectually intimate with each other. There are times when one or both of them feel that their marriage is not what it should be and that they are not fulfilling the obligations imposed by their marriage. On one occasion, Lydia even suggests to her husband that she needs another woman.
Little Anna is an arrogant little girl who spends many hours imagining herself a great lady or even a queen. In his eighteenth year, a nephew of Tom comes to work in the lace factory in the nearby village of Ilkeston. He is only twenty and the Brangwen of Marsh Farm take care of him and welcome him into their home.
Anna and young Will fall in love, with a naive and moving affection for each other. When they soon announce to Tom and Lydia that they wish to get married, Tom rents them a house in the village and gives them a gift of two thousand five hundred pounds so that they can manage financially, given Will's small salary.
The wedding is celebrated with rural pomp and hilarity. After the ceremony, the bride and groom spend two weeks alone in their cottage, ignoring the world and existing only for themselves. Anna is the first to return to the world of reality. Her decision to have a tea party bewilders and angers her husband, who has not yet realized that they cannot continue to live for and alone. It takes him almost a lifetime to get to that realization.
Shortly after the wedding, Anna becomes pregnant and the arrival of the baby brings to Will the additional shock that his wife is more of a mother than a married mistress. Each year, a new baby arrives between Will and Anna. The eldest is Ursula, who remains her father's favorite. The love Will wishes to give to his wife is given to Ursula, because she Anna refuses to have anything to do with him when she is expecting another child, and she is not happy unless she is pregnant with her.
In the second year of marriage, Will tries to rebel. He meets a young woman at the theater and then takes her out for dinner and for a walk. After this incident, Will and Anna's intimate life becomes passionate, enough to take Will during the day when he isn't needed in the house until the night he can rule his wife. Gradually, he becomes free in his mind from Anna's dominion.
Because Ursula is her father's favorite daughter, she is sent to high school, a rare privilege for a girl in her plight in the last decade of the nineteenth century. She drinks knowledge of her in her study of Latin, French and algebra. Before she finishes her studies, however, her academic interests are divided from her interest in a young son of a Polish friend of her grandmother. The young and blond Anton Skrebensky, lieutenant of the British army, is introduced to the Brangwen house and during a month's leave he falls in love with Ursula, who is already in love with him. On his next leave, however, he is afraid of her because her love for her is too possessive.
After finishing high school, ...
